New Delhi: A protest to give voice to a disgruntled opinion is “not only the identity of democracy, but also a fundamental right” is guaranteed under the Constitution, on Thursday a court said.The observation was done by Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Neha Mittal, while MPs Derek O’Brien, Sagarika Ghosh and Saket Gokhale, discharging 10 TMC officials, in a case registered outside the ECI in April last year in a case registered for their protest, despite prohibitory orders under Section 144 of CRPC. ACJM said whether the accused persons violated the prohibitive orders, which was a proper ban on the above fundamental rights. The court said that the accused persons knew about the order issued by the ACP that there was nothing on the record.‘None of the steps video shows any obstruction, was done by the accused’ The Delhi Court order was pronounced on Thursday, but a copy was made available on Friday. Other TMC members named in the case were Mohammad Nadimul Haq, Dola Sen, Vivek Gupta, Arpita Ghosh, Santanu Sen, Abir Ranjan Biswas and Sudeep Raha.The court said that the prosecution could not establish that the aggregation of the accused persons was an illegal assembly, nor could they prove that they were allowed to spread due to prohibitory orders. The police complaint, on the basis of which an FIR was filed, did not say that the acts of the accused were likely to have any obstruction, annoyance, injury or danger for human life, health or safety.The court said, “No videos of protest suggest that the acts of the accused individuals really did not cause any obstruction,” the court said, there was no disruption in traffic, nor was the entry into the ECI building blocked.
